Get Activated! The Business Side of Writing

• Social Media for Authors: Tips and tricks for connecting with your readers across various social media platforms without spreading yourself too thin.

• Marketing and PR for Authors: How to create a buzz about your latest book release, book launch or event, including how to approach media, write press releases, and pitch to potential reviewers.

• The Author Business: The ins and outs of being a sole trader, keeping track of submissions, invoicing, appearance fees, and what to do at tax time.

• Building your Author Brand: How to create an online presence, network, blog and promote yourself to increase your author brand (even before you are published).

• How to Get Published: Step onto a pathway to publication as Angela shares her advice and experience – being both trade and independently published.

Adults/Teens

• Finding ideas and humour: Learn how to find conflict, comedy and characters in the world around you. Then use these to influence your plotting and develop a stronger story.

• Structure in Story: Uncover your story’s structure and discover how this is influenced by character goals and conflict.

• Writing for Tweens: (upper mid-grade readers) Learn how to capture that in-between age before adolescence in your writing and engage the interests and concerns of the tween reader – with tips on finding your own tween voice.

• Hooking the Reader: Discover how to grab the attention of your reader from the very first sentence and keep them turning the pages. Tips are given for strengthening the first sentence, paragraph, pages, viewpoint character, genre and setting.

• Character Motivation: Find your character’s quirks, traits and motivation and then watch them act, react and express emotions as the story unfolds. Learn how to delve deep within the inner desires, fears and goals of the protagonist on the page as you develop and strengthen your character.

• Write a Picture Book: Learn the nuances of this specialist genre, including: themes, story arc structure, Rule of 3, word length, storyboarding, characterisation and voice.

• Create a Picture Book: Discover how to develop a visual narrative to a supplied text (or your own) and understand how the text and images interact. From preliminary roughs, character design, storyboarding, designing page layouts, to creating a dummy book, learn how text and images interact with and complement one another, striking the right narrative balance.

• Editing a Scene: A novel or short story is made up of scenes. Learn how to strengthen each scene as you polish your work ready for submission to a publisher.

• Elements of a Short Story: Develop a better understanding of the short story genre. Includes sensory writing, balancing the story, structure, plotting, characterisation, voice, language, setting, conflict, and resolutions.

Children

• Tickle the Cat: Discover how to find magic and humour in simple, everyday ideas. In this highly interactive, cat-tickling workshop participants contribute to characterisation and plotting as the group collectively crafts a story with hilarious and surprising results.

• Catnip Jam: Can you taste it? What’s it smell like? Is it hairy? These questions and more will be answered as Angela reveals the secret ingredients for combining sensory settings, strong characters and a well-balanced narrative. Discover how to strengthen a scene or your own short story as you conjure up an enchanting plot.

• Character Cat: Characters come in all shapes and sizes. Find yours and discover just what makes them tick, laugh, cry and giggle. Includes: My Character profile, Character Goals, Character Conflicts, and Character Hideouts.

• Cats’ Tales: Discover oral storytelling and traditional fairytale structure. Learn how to write your own fractured fairytale based on the ten rules that are made to be broken. Then create a fictional narrative for group presentation.

• My Story: Learn the five modes of telling, how to strengthen structure and plot, and how to plan and edit. Includes: My Story Plan, My Story Checklist, and My Top 10 Tips

• Picture This! : Storyboard & Create a Picture Book. Using her current work in progress as an example, Angela takes groups through the steps of creating a children’s picture book. From preliminary roughs, developing characters, storyboarding, designing page layouts, to creating a dummy book, learn how text and images interact with and complement one another, striking the right narrative balance. Tell a story with pictures.

Talks – all ages

• Cinderella and other Lies: The Cinderella story has spurred many retellings in a variety of genres. Angela tells how it inspired her book Snap Magic and compares it to the original Brothers Grimm telling, warts and all. Learn how to write your own fractured fairytale based on the ten fairytale rules that are made to be broken.

• Snap Magic and Pond Magic: The characters of Angela’s novels, Snap Magic and Pond Magic, are twelve years old. Gain valuable tips on using memories from your own life to inspire your stories and help create a character with a problem you’ll be itching to write about.

• Write a Book in a Day: Yes, you can! Together with friends, three key words and some crazy brainstorming. Using PowerPoint and audience participation, Angela shares how she illustrated and co-authored with the team ‘Prana Writers’ a junior fiction novel in under twelve hours, winning the National and Eastern States Awards for Write-a-Book-in-a-Day. Learn techniques on plotting, planning and working as a team. (Can also be delivered as a workshop.)